Sali Hughes: 'Why, age 39, my ultimate icon is still a 1990s supermodel'

This month we're celebrating 26 years of George Michael's Freedom

Mysterious and magnificent, the original Supers taught a legion of small-town teens that to rule the world, you needed big hair and even bigger cojones, says Sali Hughes.

In my attic is a towering pile of glossy magazines. I store the most special of my vast collection here, safe from children and the recycling bin. Most prized is my January 1990 edition of Vogue, the cover shot by Peter Lindbergh and featuring Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford – or, as I’ll always know them, The Supermodels.

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Why would I, a 39-year-old woman, prefer to sell my kitchen table than a gnarled old magazine? Because growing up in South Wales as a fashion-obsessed teenager, these models represented a level of glamour and aspiration, the like of which I’d never seen before – or since. My walls were plastered with their images; my brows were plucked like Naomi’s; my lip liner, like Linda’s, was five shades too dark for my lipstick.

I even wore the natural mole on my face with pride, just like Cindy did. And time hasn’t faded my admiration – even now, I’ll look up George Michael’s Freedom and Too Funky videos on YouTube, and feel stunned by the full line-up of original Supers, goddess-like and strutting around like they rule the world. And let’s face it, between 1989 and 1995, they practically did.

The Supers represented a lethal cocktail of attributes: skin and bone structure to die for; implausibly huge, glossy hair; tall, Amazonian bodies that looked strong, healthy and slim, not emaciated and fragile. (Tatjana told me in a Red cover interview that she and the other Supers, at size 10, could never have fit into today’s catwalk samples.)

Despite starting their careers as teens, they always looked like women, not little girls. They seemed like the kind of broads who could deal swiftly with a male pest with no more than a raised, perfectly shaped eyebrow. But they were so much more than gorgeous faces and feminine guile. They were razor-sharp businesswomen.

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After decades of models being the least respected and most poorly paid employees in high fashion, the Supers knew their worth and made designers pay through the nose for them. They became spokespeople, MTV presenters, moguls, guests on Oprah. In 1995, Cindy Crawford was the highest-earning model on the planet. Then Linda Evangelista told the world she refused to get out of bed for less than $10,000 (woman-with-a-sense-of-humour alert!).

They showed the rest of us that it was perfectly possible to be glamorous and feminine and entrepreneurial and tough.

Then along came grunge, which eschewed everything glitzy and fabulous, and a more recent obsession with celebrities – ever fuelled by social media. It seemed like the era of those untouchable, rarefied Supers had been permanently laid to rest. But it hasn’t!

Now, they’re back, reborn like the Terminator, fronting new campaigns, inspiring fortysomething women like me and giving the teenage upstarts a serious run for their money. Age has not withered them, either.

People say there are new Supers: Kate Upton, Cara Delevingne and the ubiquitous Victoria’s Secret models, whose pay packets probably make Linda Evangelista’s 1990s rates seem like pin money. And they’re all gorgeous, all savvy. And glowy and fabulous and jaw-droppingly glamorous. But somehow they don’t have the same mystique, the same star quality. I no longer need to wait for a new magazine to plop through the letter box to see what they’re doing. If ever I have even the mildest curiosity about what Cara Delevingne is up to, I can log on to Instagram.

It somehow breaks the spell. Except, reassuringly, in one case. There’s still a post-Supers model who never shares selfies or glib platitudes, influencing a generation of fashion fans and maintaining her iconic status by never complaining and never explaining. Thank God we’ll always have Kate Moss.

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